Shades of upside down Tiljander. McIntyre is delving further into the Marcott proxy issue and it looks almost certain now there’s a statistical processing error (selection bias).
Steve McIntyre writes:
In the graphic below, I’ve plotted Marcott’s NHX reconstruction against an emulation (weighting by latitude and gridcell as described in script) using proxies with published dates rather than Marcott dates. (I am using this version because it illustrates the uptick using Marcott methodology. Marcott re-dating is an important issue that I will return to.) The uptick in the emulation occurs in 2000 rather than 1940; the slight offset makes it discernible for sharp eyes below.
Marcottian
uptricksupticks arise because of proxy inconsistency: one (or two) proxies have different signs or quantities than the larger population, but continue one step longer. This is also the reason why the effect is mitigated in the infilled variation. In principle, downticks can also occur – a matter that will be covered in my next post which will probably be on the relationship between Marcottian re-dating and upticks.
Read his full post here: How Marcottian Upticks Arise
Maybe we need an Uptick Rule for paleoclimatology
HenryP says:
March 16, 2013 at 8:30 am
the whole AGW world is filled with this Marcott paper.
once again, the public at large will ignore global cooling until it is too late
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/02/21/henrys-pool-tables-on-global-warmingcooling/
…
Maybe they should print these papers directly on toilet paper, and cut out
the middle-Mann, so to speak…
or we can use them to light our wood stoves after all fossil fuels have been banned…
oops, probably wood’s on their list too….
There are some very wise comments above.
I have a little – basic – statistics. I have a little – basic – Italian from twenty or so lessons at ‘I Calabresi’.
I need to do a lot of Willis’s maths pushups if I am able to run with this – yet, as GlynnMhor correctly adduces, my computer is able to do so much more.
If I knew how to make the bloat-ware work.
And If I half-understood the answer, too!
And – know what it’s doing?
Oh – and why?
Oooooooooooooooooh, I don’t know about those!
Ahhh – but I can do estimates – you know, the simple sum in your head that tells you which one of 12, 1,200, and 120,000 is – certainly – the right answer.
As for Professor Marcott, and perhaps his colleagues, collaborators, and comrades, confirmation bias [if present, of course] seems to be a bit of a loaded dice.
So many studies over so many years.
I had better stop here before lapsing into indelicacy.
I’m in my fifth decade in shipping so – yeah, I can do indelicacy. But I’m not going to . . .
Auto
When I was a researcher, I think Charles II was on the throne, our papers were refereed. We never knew who they were, and I am sure they were unbiased. They might have been our peers, or on many cases more experienced scientists, probably would be described as Royals these days. But they did make mistakes, as I know, because I later found mistakes that I had made that were not picked up. But the seemingly basic errors in Marcot’s work should surely have been found by his supervisor. But, as others have said, there is too much trust in peer reviewing.
Meanwhile, Mann is happy as a clam on his Facebook page, linking to e.g. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-warming-detailed-in-new-temperature-records/2013/03/15/688d53f4-8846-11e2-999e-5f8e0410cb9d_story.html and tagging it #ExtendedHockeyStick
German winter warming put of until 2050 or 2100 by no other than Mojib Latif. Pierre had a thought time writing this piece as he couldn’t stop laughing. 🙂
http://notrickszone.com/2013/03/16/internationally-renowned-ipcc-scientist-prof-mojib-latif-now-postpones-warm-winters-by-up-to-100-years/
Typo:
Pierre had a tough time writing this piece as he couldn’t stop laughing. 🙂
You can believe one of two things. Either the Science staff, the authors and the reviews are all complete idiots or they knew exactly what they were doing. Your choice.
Willis Eschenbach says:
March 16, 2013 at 10:23 am
Kelvin Vaughan says:
March 16, 2013 at 8:35 am
Plot this. Its the total number of sunspots in each cycle since 1878 and the total of the yearly average CET temperature for each cycle.
Man, I hates it when people do that. I took a look at your numbers, Kelvin. There is NO STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE to the correlation between the temperature and the sunspot datasets you show, p = 0.19. Heck, there’s no correlation even without adjustment for autocorrelation, p = 0.09 in that case.
There’s a technical name for that kind of result.
It’s “hogwash”.
RUN THE NUMBERS, people. That’s why statistics was invented—to let us know what is significant and what isn’t. What you’ve given us isn’t significant in the slightest.
And if your math isn’t strong enough to handle the calculations for significance, you have two choices:
1. Do your math pushups until your skills ARE strong enough for you to play, or
2. Sit on the sidelines and pay close attention to the game.
Both are good positions to take, no shame in either one.
Best regards,
w.
I’m no statistician Willis.
You won’t find what your looking for in fijne detail as the temperature is dependant on so many things. I just see coarse patterns. Now I have discovered that the minimum temperature is going antiphase all the time over each cycle.
The temperature is trying to keep constant.
Sorry if I have annoyed you again Willis.
Best Regards
I get a distinct feeling that the whole “Global Warming” paper mill suffers from circular (You scratch my back, I scratch yours and keep the critics out) peer review and referencing.
HenryP says:
March 16, 2013 at 9:04 am
Henry@Kelvin Potter
there is no temp?
Sorry Henry the columns have closed up. The temperature is the last four digits. It’s the sum of the yearly averages over each cycle.
The middle six digits are the total sunspots over each cycle. The date is the end date of each cycle.
Steve has a plausible explanation, but I am not sure it is fully correct or complete. The data sets are identical, yet there is no uptick in Marcotts thesis even though some of the reconstructions are identical (e.g. Standard 5×5 at 100 year intervals, and at 20 year intervals using RegEN infilling).
The dropout problem should have caused an uptick in the thesis. It did not. Something else is going on.
There are two possibilities. One is the algorithms. But the block diagrams of those are identical in the thesis and Science paper. Unlikely to have changed.
That leaves the likelihood that something was changed in the data to generate the strong ‘blade’ to the Science hockey stick. There is strong evidence for this. Thesis figure 4.3C shows that 9 proxy series remain at T0 (1950) after a slow steady dropout beginning about 1500. Graphing all 9 ( which extend beyond 1950)shows basically no change for centuries, and if anything a slight downtick from 1950 on. Science figure 1C shows that no proxy series survive to 1950. ZERO. What happened to the nine that did in the thesis? Science claims exactly the same 73 proxies from exactly the same references. Steve McIntyre says Marcott redated some series differently than in the references. Science 1C says that at a minimum, 9 series were slide back in time so that none survived to 1950. I imagine that by sliding negatives and constants back, and sliding strong positives forward, a blade could easily be created by dropout as Steve showed above.
And that is likely what happened. Thesis figure 4.3C shows a slow steady dropout from 70 proxies in 1500 to 9 in 1950. Science figure 1C shows much less dropout until about 1850 ( about 40 proxies survive compared to about 20 in the thesis). Then the dropout rate accerates, with none surviving to 1950. So so for Science a number of the proxy series were redated without disclosure to create the hockey stick that did not exist in the thesis.
But without disclosing the redating rationale, the methods used, and the results, it is just playing with data until getting the answer sought. There are less polite terms for such things.
I agree with Papertiger, Latitude and everyone else who doesn’t see this as any sort of error.
Let’s call it what it is. Loudly and repeatedly. it’s FRAUD. I also agree with Joe Public that we should start naming names, not just of the authors of such papers, but those who let these poor-excuse-for-science papers through to help their Cause. Peer acceptance is no error, either. These peer reviewers are part of the FRAUD.
If those who review papers come to realize they’ll be tossed in the same pot as the authors, then maybe they’ll take more care what they put their endorsement to.
The bottom line is these people continue to screw us over. It is very deliberate with the consequences to the world being very bad.
Richard M says:
March 16, 2013 at 1:27 pm
You can believe one of two things. Either the Science staff, the authors and the reviews are all complete idiots or they knew exactly what they were doing. Your choice.
==============
I would say the Science staff and the reviewers are all complete idiots….
…the authors knew exactly what they were doing
You can not do this paper by accident, ignorance, or stupidity……
…if you did, you would get the same answers others have
The only way this paper can come to the conclusion it has…..is by fraud and manipulation
….
Jimbo says:
March 16, 2013 at 9:44 am
“I find just 1 story in the Guardian for the Marcott paper in the World News section and it does not appear in their Climate Change section. They would normally be about 7 stories peppered throughout the Climate Change section of the Guardian. As for the BBC I can’t find anything. Maybe it’s just me. What do people think is going on?”
The same thing is happening in Germany. Der Spiegel does not produce climate related Sky Is Falling agitprop anymore but has delegated the theme to their (trustworthy!) science man Bojanowski. (For several weeks now).
That means that the international propaganda machine is done with warmism. Instead they will attack all forms of free markets directly – currently a lot of agitprop against food speculation for instance. One German charity had all railway stations plastered with that last week.
Warmism was a means to an end but has run its course now. Marcott and Shakun are the last, fighting rearguard (Hockey stick) action.
I suggest that Marcott becomes the top post at the moment – CG3 will be a slow burn whilst Marcott is a shooting star burning bright.
Rud Istvan;
There are two possibilities. One is the algorithms. But the block diagrams of those are identical in the thesis and Science paper.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Confused as to why you would say that. Since the graphs are very different between the thesis and the Science paper, would the logical conclusion not be that the algorithms that produced them are different regardless of what the block diagram shows?
would the logical conclusion not be that the algorithms that produced them are different regardless of what the block diagram shows?
>>>>>>>>>>
Or conversely, if the algorithms are the same, then the data must be different.
But I think the truth of the matter is that there are SO many things wrong with this paper that boiling it down to one…or three….or ten…. problems just won’t be possible.
What’s the deal with the “downtick”?
We are supposed to accept and be alarmed about the “uptick”, but just before that there was an unexplored “down” of almost 1C that I don’t recognize.
Going up is real, going down is noise?
The paper needs to be withdrawn and revised. I wonder what the editors would say.
re: IPCC and Marcott et al (2013), also posting this at Bishop Hill
Here is a fascinating blog commentary on the Marcott study, because it appears to be by the same Prof. RA Brown who recently commented critically at CA (on a different matter), and who is at Dept. of Atmospheric Sciences, the Univ. of Washington. [h/t John M at CA]
I find it suggestive that he twice refers to the Marcott study as having an IPCC imprimatur (see where he says “IPCC study” and “IPCC report”). As a climate science insider, Prof. Brown may have an interesting perspective on why he portrays the Marcott study as already an “IPCC study” when AR5 has not been finalized and the Marcott paper has only just been published. Did he have specific information that that Marcott was already an “IPCC study” (whatever that means)??
RA Brown on Marcott et al. (2013) and the triumph of the IPCC hockey stick
[emphasis added]
RE: Mann’s #ExtendedHockeyStick
PrematureHockeyStick is more like it. Marcott’s spike is in 1920-1940.
I think the real denial is about the deliberateness of the dishonesty of “false advocates” in *many* areas, not just climate.
Statistical math in medicine is *horrifying*.
Deja vu yet again. Josh (after Lucia) last year:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/screening2Josh.jpg
So ‘peer review’ worked perfectly again.
Shouldn’t the people doing the review be subject to scrutiny over this? Shouldn’t their competence be called into question?
After all reports like this one ensure that billions of dollars get wasted.
Henry@Kelvin Potter, Willis
I also cannot get a plot out of that that makes sense to me. Remember that in a cooling period sucIh as now, CET runs opposite of the a-c wave
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
as determined earlier by me (post went missing)
simply because it gets more clouds and precipitation. So paradoxically it gets warmer in CET because globally it is getting cooler.,… it is called the GH effect…..
Skiphil says:
March 16, 2013 at 3:19 pm
I’m sure it will be exciting when the proles take up the pitchforks!
DaveE.